


Better

by babyblueglasses



Series: Infinity War Fix Its [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pillow Talk, Spoilers, infinity war fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyblueglasses/pseuds/babyblueglasses
Summary: Preemptive Infinity War fix it fic.





	Better

“Tony!” A hand clasped his bicep. “Tony—” He blindly swung his arm, the back of his limp hand colliding with something soft and something pointed that felt suspiciously like a tooth. Tony heard a slight hiss and then his offending hand was floating back down in a way that was achingly familiar.

His wrists met plush sheets. His bed. He was in his bed. Tony blinked, struggling to see in the dark as his hands remained immobilized by an invisible force. Tony swallowed. “I prefer when you use this trick for other things in the bedroom,” Tony joked, voice hoarse. The pressure vanished.

“As do I.” A surge of relief and affection swept through Tony at the voice beside him. Loki was there, alive and real. No matter how many times it happened, there was no getting used to losing Loki. It was a fresh wound every time. “You’ve had that dream again,” Loki stated. 

Tony collapsed against the bed, aware now of the cold sweat clinging to his skin. Loki curled into him, possessively stroking his fingers against the absent spot in Tony’s chest. Now there was nothing but a circular band of metal and a synthetic skin covering where the arc reactor had been. “I’m here,” Loki said beside his ear. The whispered words gave Tony a comfort he couldn’t bear to ask for. “I’m here.” 

Tony twisted himself towards Loki, grasping and tugging the much heavier god into him before he could get self-conscious, his limbs stiff and fumbling when he realized how needy he looked. 

And Loki, so much more merciful than anyone had given him credit for, only drew Tony against him in response, holding him with a strength that was as humbling as it was comforting. 

Tony breathed in, soothed by Loki’s familiar scent. And yet, the moment his body relaxed by a fraction, his mind picked up the slack with a vengeance. “I was married to Pepper this time,” Tony said. “We were going to have a baby. And Peter, he—” Tony’s heart started to pound. 

Tony only realized Loki’s fingers were stroking through his hair when he picked out the notes of the Asgardian lullaby Loki was murmuring against his ear. Tony knew it was a deliberate move, for it not to translate through the AllSpeak, and as much as Tony wanted to know why, what it was that Loki hid about the song, he was always too moved by the simple fact that Loki was singing it for him. 

His voice plucked up and down in a breathy, murmured melody that didn’t seem to hit the notes quite right but was only more beautiful for it. Tony let his eyes fall shut. Loki’s warm breath drifted against his ear, carrying the tune, if Tony still had any doubt that he was there and real. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony started. Loki’s fingers pressed to his lips. 

“There is no sorry.” The bed groaned as Loki crawled over him instead, pinning him to the mattress. “Not for this.” Loki pressed his forehead to Tony’s, and if the room had been a little brighter, Tony would’ve been able to see the way Loki’s eyelids squeezed together, shutting out the grueling pain and weariness. Loki had his own nightmares of Thanos. Tony had been on the other side of this scenario many times before. “Do you want me to look?” 

“No. No, I—” Tony wrapped his arms around Loki, holding him as tightly as he could. “You’re here.” Tony drew in a slower breath. “I know it’s all in my head.” He didn’t want Loki to have to suffer through those images. He didn’t need him to, like he had, once, when it was too much to stand against alone. 

Loki was quiet for a while, but his hold on Tony didn’t let up for a second. Tony had calmed down substantially when Loki spoke again. “These nightmares, Tony. I cannot fail to notice that in them the weight of the world is on your shoulders.” Tony breathed in. “It needn’t be that way.” 

“But I—” Loki’s grip tightened, on the knife’s edge of too much, and Tony pushed back slightly, Loki letting up. “I can do something,” Tony said. Loki had heard the speech before. “I can stop Thanos if I just come up with a plan—”

“—and why is it _you_ that should come up with a plan?” Loki shifted with frustration, his chest pushing against Tony’s.

“I can,” Tony said. “So I should.” 

Loki let out a hissy breath. “Damn your heroism,” he whispered. Loki pulled himself up, folding his arms and setting them just gingerly enough against Tony’s chest that Tony knew it was intentional. “Let us say you _do_ take on a plan,” Loki said. “Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that you will need assistance. You will, yes?” 

“Yeah.” Tony didn’t like where this was going simply because he could hear the conviction in Loki’s voice.

“And let us suppose that something goes awry in the course of this plan. Things often do, do they not?” 

Tony sighed. “Lo, I—”

“—Do they not?” 

“They do,” Tony conceded. 

Loki leaned down closer to him, his voice dropping lower. “Then let us suppose that someone you ally with loses someone. Let us suppose that, by no action of your own, something goes wrong. Who will they blame?” 

Tony didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. “Who will they blame, Anthony?” 

“Don’t use that name—”

“They will blame _you_ ,” Loki said, voice rife with emotion. “They, who carried out their part as much as you. They, who offered no plan of their own and relied on your genius. They, who are so stupid, so feeble minded as to point to a scapegoat when their own hands are dripping with blood will blame _you_ for things that are beyond your control and I _will. Not. Have. It._ ” 

“Lo,” Tony soothed, drawing his arms in tighter around Loki’s back. He brushed Loki’s hair back from his face, afraid that he might feel tears. “Lo,” Tony said. He couldn’t make out Loki’s features in the darkness. “Babe, I—” Loki’s breath escaped his lips, only to be held tightly again. “I just want to save everyone, if I can.” Tony ran his fingers through Loki’s smooth, soft hair. He wished he could see him better, but he also feared what he would see and so he said nothing to Friday. 

“They’ll blame you the same way they did with Sokovia and the accords so many other things,” Loki said. “You work for an ungrateful populace, Tony. I won’t—I won’t stand by and allow you to be used again.” 

Tony licked his lips. What could he say? Loki was right. He often did shoulder the blame, though most of it was the blame he put on himself. But Tony couldn’t stand to be idle if there was something, anything that he could do. 

“Last time,” Loki said. He was tense in Tony’s arms. “I haven’t forgiven them for the way you were left. The damage to your soul—”

“Soul—” Tony started, on the start of some rebuttal about being melodramatic when Loki cut him off again.

“I am _furious_ about it, Tony.” 

“Well what about what Thanos did to you, huh? If I—”

“—Tony,” Loki said, grasping his shoulders and leaning down so that their noses almost touched. The intimacy of it made Tony want to give in right there and seek comfort from Loki instead, but they needed to say these things. “We lay low.” Tony’s lips parted to argue. “We lay low,” Loki insisted. “And when and _if_ the time comes, we act. But until then, we enjoy the life we have.” He tilted his head, his breath drifting against Tony’s lips. “What we have.” 

He claimed Tony with a kiss that drew out the remnants of the dream’s venom. Tony held Loki to him, taking more reassurance from the way Loki’s lips molded to his than he could say. He had a good life with Loki. It was greater than he’d dared to hope for. When they parted for a breath with a soft sound, Loki’s voice was unusually tender. “I refuse to lose you.” 

“I refuse to lose you too, Lo, that’s why that dream—” Tony cut himself off, unable to say it. With Loki there, alive and well in his arms, it felt dangerous to speak of it, like maybe his words would make it come true. “I just—I want to be ready, you know? To make sure you don’t go anywhere.” 

“I am here,” Loki said. He brushed his fingers through Tony's hair, carefully drawing the loose locks back from his face even though it made no difference in the dark. “And having died once before, were it to happen again, what makes you think it would last?” 

Tony smiled at Loki’s wry humor although it really made him uncomfortable to think of Loki dying alone in the middle of the universe. Again. 

“What happened to Strange in the dream this time?” Loki asked. A real grin struck Tony’s face. Loki loathed Strange, and Tony kind of enjoyed his pettiness. 

“He just handed the stone over.” 

“He would,” Loki mumbled with smug glee. 

Tony didn’t give him more detail than that. It was just a stupid dream anyway. For a moment he just let himself lay there, held steady by Loki’s weight and the knowledge that he was there. He could still hold Loki, could still ask him anything he could conceive of and hear Loki's reply. Tony reveled in that simple blessing as long as his mind would let him. 

“Hey, Lokes? You know the Grandmaster guy you were telling me about? The one with the orgy ship?” 

“Are there so many that owning an orgy ship is how they’re distinguished?” 

Tony let himself relax, smiling at Loki’s snark. “You know how you said he can manipulate energy on a molecular level over a global scale?” 

“And can read minds and alter memories and control people effortlessly?” Loki asked. “That one?” 

“Yeah. That one.” 

“What about him?” Loki asked with reluctant curiosity. 

“Why don’t we ask him to help?” Tony didn’t have to see Loki to know his reaction. He could feel it as he held him. “There’s no way he’d let Thanos run around unchecked if he knew, right? You said he’s a lunatic, but he’s amenable. I bet we could convince him.” Loki didn’t answer right away, which meant he was thinking, which was a good thing. “He’s got an orgy ship,” Tony playfully added. 

“He’s also got an arena to make a spectacle of murder,” Loki said. 

They were both quiet for a minute.

“Maybe we could send him an e-mail?” Tony suggested.

Loki laughed. It was easily Tony’s favorite sound in the universe. “Maybe we should.” 

Loki combed his fingers through Tony’s hair, then found his chin and cupped it with his fingers. “And perhaps sooner is better if it can take these dreams from you.” Loki’s thumb brushed against his bottom lip. “I do not wish for you to dream of everyone’s deaths each night.” 

“It’s okay. I know you’re here,” Tony said. He drew Loki into a kiss, cradling his head as Loki’s lips parted for him, the god’s fingers sliding into his hair.

Loki was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> This kind of falls in line with my [Civil War fix-it](https://archiveofourown.org/series/584323), if you're in need of more. :)


End file.
